Chained To A Sink
by Mondhase
Summary: Set during episode 2x13 "One of Us" as Hunter is locked up in the bathroom. Two-shot.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's note: Hunter's thoughts during**** episode ****2x13 "One of Us" as he is chained up in the bathroom.**

**I already published two sequels to this, called "Trapped In A Maze" and "Kept In The Dark" that deal with scenes from the following two episodes.**

**Credit for the title goes to the wonderful Llwydyn, who shares my love for the amazing character that is Lance Hunter.**

* * *

**Chained To A Sink - Chapter 1**

Even as he's pulling at the chain, he knows it's useless.

The pipe underneath the sink is far too sturdy to loosen anytime soon and each time he pulls, the metal cuff cuts painfully into his wrist. That doesn't stop him, though. Instead, he doubles his efforts, as the pain actually manages to intensify his already burning anger and that's the only one of his feelings he's willing to deal with right now.

Anger is good. It keeps him distracted. Because if he's busy being angry at the two people responsible for all this – for attacking him, dragging him off the base and keeping him chained up like a criminal in this pathetic bathroom – he doesn't have time to feel betrayed by them. Then he can't think about just how much it hurts to have two of the only people in the world he actually trusted turn against him and do _this_ to him.

Hunter gives his chain another yank, but his efforts are as futile as before. He lets out a groan as he falls back against the wall to catch his breath for a moment before he would try again.

_If he really is gone, then the number of people I trust on this planet just plummeted._ His words to Bobbi after Mack had gotten possessed by the alien city and fallen down that shaft come back to him now, sounding absolutely laughable. Mack is a spy, a _secret_ agent, so how could he have ever thought he was able to trust him? One would think he would have learned his lesson by now.

And Bobbi...

At this point, however, Hunter stops himself, not allowing his thoughts to go there. Instead, he resumes his efforts to get free once again, clenching his teeth against the pain, grateful as it washes away everything except his anger.

He only stops when Mack comes back into the room, bringing him pizza and beer, both his favourite. Maybe that's going to be his last meal, he muses briefly and calls his _former_ friend out on that. He denies it, though.

"If you were supposed to be dead, you'd already be dead," he says and Hunter has no doubt about that. He doesn't believe a single word coming out of Mack's mouth any longer, not without suspecting lies and manipulations behind each of them, but this one thing he does believe.

If someone had ordered Mack to kill him, he definitely would be dead by now. The man with whom he was laughing and joking only a few days ago and who he considered one of his best friends, would have killed him most likely without so much as batting an eye. Hunter would have choked out his last breath back in the cargo hold of the Bus, his body never to be seen again.

Which might still be how all of this is going to end, he reminds himself, making it all the more infuriating that he now has to listen to Mack as he's trying to get back on his good side. As if any of this talk about the 'good old days', back when they first met, would make him forgive the other man for kidnapping him.

Hunter has the brief impulse to attack Mack with the bottle standing next to him, but in the end he decides against it after all, not wanting to waste a perfectly good beer. He isn't going to let him get away with some cheap bullshit like that, though, and so he replies accordingly. His voice is dripping with spite and sarcasm as he reminds Mack that, even though he still has a lot to learn as far as deception goes, he has at least been in this game long enough to see through his weak attempt of using their years of friendship to manipulate him.

When Mack is finally about to leave again, after realising that he won't be able to stockholm-syndrom his prisoner, Hunter holds him back for another moment. His voice is entire nonchalant at first, but it becomes more strained with every word as the entire weight of his anger seeps into it.

"I'll tell you what I remember, Mack. Dubai was a cover and because I wasn't SHIELD, you didn't tell me. _Lies_. That's what I remember."

The expression on Mack's face shows regret, even guilt, but Hunter doesn't buy it. Not anymore. Even if he did, it doesn't matter. He and Mack are done and no amount of regret is going to change that. Whatever friendship they used to have died in a choke hold back in the garage of the Bus.

When Mack closes the bathroom door behind him, Hunter throws the bottle after all, watching it splinter apart into a thousand sharp pieces, his favourite beer spilling all over the floor.

As he goes back to pulling at his chain, back to the numbing pain, he briefly feels regret, too, but he only regrets not doing this earlier, when he still would have had an actual target to hit. Someone to hurt like he has been hurt.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chained To A Sink - Chapter 2**

He's stopped struggling a while ago now. He knows he was never actually going to get away like that anyway and at some point it has even stopped working against the unwanted thoughts and feelings, no longer keeping them at bay. His wrist is sore and aching, with a few drops of blood running down from where the metal of the cuff cut into his skin, but Hunter doesn't care. In fact, he barely feels it anymore.

No, right now, as he's just sitting on the cold bathroom tiles, leaning with his back against the wall, his thoughts are focused on only one thing: He's trying to figure out what he's going to say to _her _the next time they meet; assuming, of course, he's ever going to see her again.

There are a few very colourful expletives on his mind as he's thinking about her, but those don't really seem to be enough to convey just what exactly he's feeling about his ex at the moment.

_I take it all back. All the 'don't die out there's! 'Cause I'd been better off if she _had_ died out—_

He meant every word of that – still does – and he wants to say it again, to her face this time. To make sure she understands just how much he despises her after what she did, after how she played him – _again_. Although, he's not really sure if she would even care.

Hell, he's not even sure if Bobbi is actually capable of that emotion.

However, trying to cope with getting betrayed by the two people closest to him isn't the most infuriating thing for Hunter right now. It's that, even though he really wishes Bobbi would rot in hell, there's also that tiny part of him – that hopelessly _stupid _part of him to be more exact – that thinks (or at least hopes) that Bobbi, _his_ Bobbi, wouldn't have played him like this without a really good reason. That despite her many secrets, deep down she is a good person, and that whatever is going on right now isn't as bad as it appears to be.

Only this time he ignores that part of him, because he's not going to forgive her for any of this. Not again. He's done with that, too, with listening to Bobbi's explanations and excuses, while at the same time she keeps treating him like nothing more than just another pawn in one of her many games.

_I don't know where the angles end._

_With you!_

Hunter lets out a humourless chuckle in the silence of his prison as he remembers that particular little exchange after Bobbi's interrogation of Bakshi had ended with the man in the infirmary. He shakes his head at the memory of how easily he fell for her lies once again. He is amazed, really, how Bobbi is able to say things like that while managing to keep a straight face.

He actually saw through her that day, called her out on her ulterior motives when interrogating their prisoner and even began to suspect the secret plan she had in motion. And yet, Bobbi once again managed to deflect him with her arguments, her assertions and ultimately by jumping into bed with him again. Or rather into the van, in this case.

Hunter sighs as he realises that he never stood a chance against Bobbi in any of this. She really is the perfect spy, willing to do whatever it takes to fulfil her mission. Even him.

He's pretty sure she loved him once and he knows he always will – not that that's going to stop him from killing her if he ever gets the chance – but he can't help but wonder, if there's even a part of her that still thinks of him like that. A part of her to which these last few weeks they have spent together were more than just a means to an end, a way to distract him from finding out the truth.

He wants to believe it. He really does.

Even now he wants to cling to that last fragment of hope that's telling him that maybe _he_ is the exception. The one person who ever got far enough under Agent Bobbi Morse's skin to make it impossible for her _not_ to feel something – anything – as her game plays out and she's betraying him.

In the end, however, he knows that that is just another of her lies. One that he has actually started to tell himself now.

As Hunter looks over at the chain holding him, slightly turning his still sore neck in the process, he realises that there is no point in trying to make excuses any longer; not for Bobbi or Mack and certainly not for him.

Maybe Bobbi has loved him once, he will never be able to be sure of that, but he knows for a fact that she doesn't love him anymore, no matter how much he would like to convince himself otherwise. Because if she did, he wouldn't be in this situation.

Hunter is fully aware he's not an expert on love by any standards, but he's sure that if Bobbi's feelings for him were actually genuine, she would have already come to free him, kicking Mack's ass in the process for ever attacking him, no matter what secret the two are hiding this time.

No, Hunter doesn't ask himself anymore if Bobbi loves him, because she didn't come for him and he knows she never will and that's all the answer he needs.

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When he wakes up later to the sound of a helicopter outside, just as Mack comes into the room with a bag he pulls over his head, Hunter is feeling surprisingly composed. The anger and hurt over his friends' betrayal is now buried underneath a thick layer of professionalism, spite and pure stubbornness. If Bobbi and Mack can forget about their personal relationship this easily, then so can he, or at least that is what he has convinced himself of.

From this moment on, they are no longer his ex-wife and his best friend who betrayed him, they are the enemy, and somehow this makes the situation a lot easier, bearable even. Because an enemy is something Hunter actually knows how to deal with.


End file.
